Thursday, October 18, 2012

“If an out-group member steps on my toes, I am more likely
to say, “He is an inconsiderate person” though, with an in-group member I will
describe the behavior exactly: “He stepped on my toes.” In contrast, an
out-group member acting nicely is described specifically—“She gave me
directions to the train station.”—while an in-group member is described as
being “a helpful person”.The Folly of Fools, Robert Trivers, PhD Professor
at Rutgers

In-Group vs. Out-Group behavior isn’t just found between
differing religious/philosophical groups, differing socioeconomic backgrounds
and differing ethnic groups, it is found in almost any setting where a “group”
can form. Consider how children “group
up” in elementary and middle school. Consider the labels of “popular” and
“unpopular” that children give to each other to serve as identification markers
of who’s who.

When you’re a child
(between the ages of 8-16) and you are socially excluded from the popular students
and their cliques, you start to make observations about group behavior. Of
course, you, yourself, are not entirely dispassionate or free of bias, but you
can definitely start to notice more things about group behavior from the
outside. I would wager that these observations are more transparent and less
affected by bias than from an in-group perspective. Why? Well, for one, you are
less fraught by an emotional, irrational attachment to the group when you are
on the outside. Being a loner, you have less reason to maintain cohesion with
members.

As a child, what I noticed—often repeatedly---was how unfair
and capricious the popular group members behaved and how inordinately arbitrary
their responses were depending on who they
were talking to. For instance, I
remember being talked to in a derogatory tone for asking a certain question,
yet, if one of the in-group members asked a roughly similar question, they
would elicit no such response. Instead, their questions were often acknowledged
with kindness and a noticeable level of respect. Sometimes, the in-group member
might try and rationalize that “my question was actually more stupid than the in-group
member’s question” but in all reality, the difference of my question was
insignificant compared to the difference in how
they responded to me. The critical difference seemed to be that I wasn’t part of their group, thus,
their response to me differed.

If you look carefully, you will start to notice this
behavior exhibited by many people. We
all do it from time to time—irrationally treating our close friends’ ideas as
superior to the stranger who proposes a similar or even identical idea. We
might latch onto the “slight” difference in the stranger’s idea to justify our alliance
to our in-group member (friend) instead.

To observe this
behavior among humans, pay special attention to how people respond to their
friends ideas/behaviors/suggestions compared to how they respond to their
acquaintances/strangers/homeless people/ people they’ve met for the first time/
comments, behaviors, and suggestions. We
all know that our close friends make mistakes—the question is, do we treat
their mistakes with less harshness than we treat the similar mistakes of
strangers or “out-group members”?

The in-group bias is one of my biggest pet-peeves because it
interferes with truth and the acquisition of knowledge. It adds an extra layer
on top of what is actually needed to examine. More specifically, the person—not
what they’re saying—is factored into the equation. If your friend said something stupid and then a homeless guy said a similar thing, you may very likely treat the homeless guy with more derision than your friend—and that is irrational, not to mention obnoxious.

If you consider
yourself a rational person your critique should be on what the person is
saying—the objective facts being presented.
This is very hard to do.

Since the studies show that we are biased towards treating
our friends and kin (group members) more kindly than outsiders, we must exert considerable effort to avoid doing
this. We should always ask ourselves, is this individual being ridiculed
because the facts he/she presents are anathema to current scientific analysis?...
or because he/she isn’t a member of “our group” or maybe because we personally
find this individual to be annoying?

I would prefer that
people treat each other equally. It doesn’t matter what they look like, whether
they’re male or female, whether they are annoying or aloof, what they’re
wearing, what they’re socioeconomic status is, whether or not they are friends
with that person or what kind of cultural or ethnic background they have. What matters is the claims that are made. A person’s
choice of words will always be unique, so what needs to be focused on are the specific claims presented.

If you don’t like the person you don’t like the person—but
don’t try and twist it into a case of the other person (most-likely someone not
in your group) being “stupid” or “unreasonable”--especially when your own group
members are saying very similar things and receiving credit for very similar things.

Monday, October 8, 2012

“The results have been remarkably consistent. When it comes
to lie detection, the public might as well simply toss a coin. It doesn’t
matter whether you are male or female, young or old, few people are able to
detect deception with any degree of reliability.”

Quirkology, Richard Wiseman

I’ve never accepted---nay, I’ve resented the common sense understanding that “Liars can be spotted
by their lack of eye contact or their nervous body language, mannerisms and/or
posture”. While I don’t want to make
this into a case of “I knew it all along” I have to say in this particular
area, I’ve always questioned this notion. Thankfully, the studies reveal that
body language and lack of eye contact are NOT strategies that a typical liar
will resort to or employ subconsciously.

In his book Quirkology, author Richard Wiseman highlights a
study conducted by Psychologist Charles Bond.
Bond wanted to find out why so many people tend to inaccurately predict
when someone is lying by determining what the typical person thinks of as the
best strategy of how to detect a lie. So,
what does the average person think of as the best way to “detect lies”?

“He asked thousands of
people from more than sixty countries to describe how they go about telling
whether someone is lying. People’s answers are remarkably consistent. From
Algeria to Argentina, Germany to Ghana, Pakistan to Paraguay, almost everyone
thinks that liars tend to avert their eyes, nervously wave their hands around
and shift about in their seats.”

In fact, when examining the liars in the study, it was found“…liars are just as likely to look you in
the eye as truth-tellers, they don’t move their hands around nervously and they
don’t shift in their seats (if anything, they are a little more static than
truth-tellers).”

Bond’s conclusion is that most people are unable to
distinguish lies from truths because they base their criteria for duplicity on
behaviors that are not associated with real deception.

How, then, does one spot a liar? Bond suggests that there is
actually a language of lying. Anyone can control their body language
and their quantity of eye contact; what is more difficult to control Bond says,
is “the words we use and how we use them.”

“Liars often distance
themselves psychologically from their falsehoods, and so they tend to include
FEWER references to themselves and their feelings and their stories."

Lies tend to be SHORTER and LESS DETAILED than truths. If
you are lying, you are more likely to incriminate yourself if you add too many
details and speak on and on about your story. While liars tend to speak
BRIEFLY and are less detailed in their descriptions, they do tend to memorize
certain necessary (non-random) details to maintain their lies—details that
non-liars wouldn’t bother memorizing.

"The most reliable
signs of lying are in people’s voices and in their unconscious choices of
language: THE LACK OF KEY DETAILS in their descriptions, the increase in pauses
and hesitations and avoiding the use of the word “I."

Cognitive Load?

Another interesting facet of lying involves the nature of cognitive load. In the book “The Folly of Fools” author
Robert Trivers posits that cognitive load is the most important variable
playing a role in deception.

What is meant by cognitive load? In the activity of lying, the brain must
consciously attend to many important operations at once. This takes a considerable amount of effort. Think
about it, to lie successfully you must be able to suggest a plausible
alternative to the actual truth, speak in a tone and manner that convinces the
other person, remember certain important details of your story as it unfolds,
say things that do not contradict information that the listener is aware of and
you must have your story memorized to recall when the need arises.

What about blinking
and nervousness?

Triver’s mentions another study regarding blinking and its
response to cognitive load when one is deceiving another: “Recent studies of
deception suggest that we blink less when
we are deceiving—cognitive load rules.
Also, contrary to usual expectation, people fidget less in deceptive situations. While someone is nervous they will
fidget more, but cognitive load has the opposite effect. ”

In other words, since
the brain has so much more to attend to while lying, there is less effort put
out to perform the actions of blinking and feeling nervous. Nervous energy
often comes from undirected “extra energy” that one has. When you are concentrating,
that extra energy is focused towards the activity at hand (i.e. lying) instead
of transpiring into nervous behaviors.

My personal “take-home” lesson from these books on
spotting liars.

1. Look for brevity in their response—an
avoidance to elaborate on the subject being questioned about (liars would rather
change the subject—people telling the truth don’t have a problem discussing the
issue at hand and the more words they use won’t increase the chances of
contradictions or incoherencies in their story).

2. Look for fewer details in their
descriptions

3. Look for fewer
self references—liars tend to avoid the use of the word “I”

4. Look at the
particular kind of language (and lack thereof), and language pattern that the
person chooses most always trumps their particular body language and quantity
of eye contact.

5. Liars blink
LESS often while deceiving.

Books I refer to in
blog post:

Book: Quirkology, 2007

Author: Richard
Wiseman, PhD—Professor of Public Understanding of Psychology at the University
of Hertfordshire

Chapter: Trust
Everyone but Always Cut the Cards (discussing lying)

Page: Starting
at 57

Book: The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life,
2011

Author: Robert
Trivers, professor of Anthropology and Biological Sciences at Rutgers
University, Winner of Crafoord Prize